On Monday 15th June, Professor Navarro, who is a professor of Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University and of Health and Public Policy at the Johns Hopkins University, and is Director of the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center, participated as an expert in the Social Policies and Care Systems Working Group of the Commission for Social and Economic Reconstruction of the Spanish Parliament. The objective of this Commission of the Spanish parliament is to establish a strategy for the country’s social and economic recuperation from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic which, according to the OECD’s latest estimates, will affect Spain particularly intensively, as it is the country in the European Union which has been most affected by the pandemic.

In Navarro’s presentation (which he had to deliver online due to the restrictions in movement caused by the pandemic) he explained the main deficits of the Spanish welfare state, in financial as well as organisational terms, and recommended increasing the public social spending to UE-15 levels. He also mentioned the need to expand the incipient fourth pillar of the Spanish welfare state, which includes Early Childhood Education and Care Services (0-3 years) and Long Term Care Services. His proposals would directly create over 650,000 jobs, and including the positions which would be indirectly created, could create up to 1.1 million new jobs in total. This information was based on a recently developed report (The Fourth Pillar of the Welfare State. A proposal to cover essential care needs, create employment and advance towards gender equality) carried out by a research team at the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center. The team’s members are Pol Carrión, Cristina Castellanos, Rosa María Martínez, Ferran Muntané and Mercedes Sastre, who carried out the project under the coordination of Professors Vicente Navarro and María Pazos. The report quantifies, in addition to the jobs that would be created, the costs of implementing this dimension of the welfare state to match Swedish standards, which would imply a total of 6,342 million euros of additional public expenditure. The proposal, which signifies an important change of direction in the public provision of care services, would bring about a significant improvement in the care of infants and dependent persons. It would also contribute to the economic independence of women and to the shared responsibility of caring duties in Spanish homes, where women today continue to have an excessive amount of work and responsibility.

Professor Navarro’s participation in the Commission, and the presentation of the report developed by the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center, intend to contribute to the economic and social recuperation of Spain, which includes a perspective on gender and takes advantage of the exceptional moment which is being experienced in order to put an end to the major deficits of the Spanish welfare state.

To see the video of Vicente Navarro’s presentation in the Commission for Social and Economic Reconstruction, click HERE.

To read the extended version of the discussion and access the presented slides, click HERE.

To access the full report, click HERE.